Focus areas of our spring program 2010 are architecture, design, and photography.

While climate change, sustainable architecture, and green technologies have become increasingly topical, issues surrounding the sustainability of the city are much less developed. The premise of the book is that an ecological approach is urgently needed both as a remedial device for the contemporary city and an organizing principle for new cities. “Ecological Urbanism” approaches the city without any one set of instruments and with a worldview that is fluid in scale and disciplinary approach. Design provides the synthetic key to connect ecology with an urbanism that is not in contradiction with its environment. The book brings together design practitioners and theorists, economists, engineers, artists, policy makers, environmental scientists, and public health specialists, with the goal of reaching a more robust understanding of ecological urbanism and what it might be in the future.

With contributions by Homi Bhabha, Stefano Boeri, Chuck Hoberman, Rem Koolhaas, Sanford Kwinter, Bruno Latour, Nina-Marie Lister, Mohsen Mostafavi, Matthias Schuler, Sissel Tolaas, Charles Waldheim, among others

This book presents three architectural responses to the idea of journeys through outer space in a future based on technology. After the 1969 moonwalk, Alessandro Poli with Superstudio considered it critical to imagine our environment as connected to outer space. His “Architettura interplanetaria” imagined a form of architecture that could be conceived and realized at the galactic scale. Poli’s “Architettura materiale,” on the other hand, challenged the optimism of journeying so far from our centre and questioned our dependence on technology. 
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is the site of one of Michael Maltzan’s current projects. His goal is to bridge earthbound scientists with their work at the scale of outer space. Maltzan challenges existing architectural models for scientific research, and proposes a new type of environment to facilitate collaboration. 
Greg Lynn imagines a virtual challenge to our traditional way of conceiving space. He proposes original ways of thinking about design in relation to gravity and is creating a computer-based simulated environment that will allow a new kind of architectural experimentation. New City is the first such virtual world to be conceived by an architect, and provides an unprecedented geographic representation of our own world.

This book will bring the reader on many journeys while questioning fundamental assumptions about architecture and space.

The acclaimed Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson developed a sequence of spatial experiments for his Your Chance Encounter exhibition in the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan. His piece challenges visitors to move around and get their bearings, and stimulates them to see the museum as a public space for addressing art and reality critically.

The installations were developed especially for the exhibition. They are arranged in a tight context with the spatial structure of the museum and extend the concept of architecture by the Japanese architecture practice SANAA. Olafur Eliasson does not work only in the museum galleries, but also in the corridors in between and the adjacent courtyards, thus linking the indoor and outdoor areas closely and examining this museum’s unique qualities.

The artist’s book was created in close co-operation with Olafur Eliasson’s studio. Its elaborate design with an extensive pictorial section offers a comprehensive record of the exhibition and an important analysis of this successful artist’s work. An essay by art historian Eve Blau interprets the exhibition in relation to its surroundings and contrasts the experimental approaches of Olafur Eliasson and SANAA, while curator Hiromi Kurosawa introduces the history and context of the museum in Kanazawa.

With texts by Eve Blau, Hiromi Kursawa

Günther Vogt and his landscape designers bring a lot of passion to their research and to their search for ideas for transforming undesigned sites or tracts of land into landscapes. They don’t want to depend just on knowledge acquired from books. They venture out into the landscape at all times of the day and year and interrogate what they see there. They make room for art and science in their studies and use the same tools to turn their landscape designs into reality. Most of their “field trips” begin out of curiosity based on something they’ve seen, heard, or read. Against this backdrop, they explore, among other things, fortifications in France, the Upper Rhine in Switzerland, and national parks in England. The results of their “field trips,” research projects, and practical implementations are collected in this publication. “Distance and Engagement” takes up where “Miniature and Panorama” left off and shows not only what Günther Vogt is working on but also, and above all, how he works.

Bekannt geworden als Lieferant von Theatertextilien für den Broadway und darüber hinaus, bereitete Maharam in den sechziger Jahren den Weg für den Einsatz technischer Textilien bei der Raumgestaltung und beliefert heutzutage als Marktführer Architekten und Innenarchitekten mit Textilien. Maharam verfolgt einen ganzheitlichen Designansatz, der eine Vielzahl verschiedener Bereiche wie Architektur, Innenarchitektur, Möbel, Mode, Zubehör, grafische und digitale Medien umfasst. Das Maharam Design Studio beaufsichtigt die Bearbeitung einer umfangreichen Textilkollektion, die von Neuauflagen beliebter Stoffe der berühmtesten multidisziplinären Visionäre des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts bis zu Textilprodukten reicht, die gemeinsam mit Vertretern anderer Disziplinen entworfen werden. So unter anderem in Zusammenarbeit mit -Konstantin Grcic, Hella Jongerius, Maira Kalman, Bruce Mau, Jasper Morrison, Nike und Paul Smith. Dieses Werk bietet einen umfassenden Überblick über Firmen-geschichte, kulturelle Bezugspunkte und Designprojekte. Abstrakte Produktanwendungen werden an den «useless objects» von Jasper Morrison gezeigt.
 

What feeds the inspiration of the designer? Observation. In Jasper Morrison’s col-lection of pictures, the icons of design history meet up with the unassuming objects of everyday life, and curious findings with the archetypes of modernism. Every picture tells a story and creates a new one in juxtaposition with its neighbor – without words, in the language of form.

Morrison responds to the arbitrariness of form with simplicity and complexity, poetry and humor in a repertoire of compelling designs. “a world without words” is a school of seeing that addresses designers and consumers alike, who wish to explore the -universe of goods.